Requiem for a Dream Reviews

A staccato narrative parallels the experiences and hallucinations of a woman on drugs with those of her son and his friends.

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Aronofsky's second feature is an emotionally intense, relentlessly grim tale of forms of addiction that may rely too much on montage to achieve real dramatic impact.

Full Review | Original Score: B

"Dream" glamorizes nothing en route to a near-nauseating finale, which feels like a rollercoaster car hitched off the track and hurtled into hell's depths. A decade later, it still follows through with full force on its cautionary stomach punch.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

"Requiem For A Dream" is a movie about drug addiction, but that's only where the plot resides so the thoroughly drawn characters can work toward their imperfect dreams. Cinema history has been made with this

Full Review | Original Score: A-

One of the most powerful I have ever seen. The film's score and editing will haunt you for years to come.

| Original Score: 5/5

Yes, visually this is an exhilarating, unique film. But it is also a singularly difficult and challenging film to watch.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

Seldom has a film so powerfully affected me as Requiem for a Dream has -- affected, in this case, as if my eyes and psyche have been bludgeoned.

Full Review | Original Score: A

If Aronofsky set out to make Trainspotting look like Teletubbies, he succeeded. Recommended only for those with extremely strong stomachs.

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Burnished camerawork and ex-Pop Will Eat Itself head Mansell's part-punchy, part-elegiac score reinforce and counterpoint the increasingly nightmarish visuals.

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Requiem for a Dream is a great movie, and the few of us who see it will be acutely affected.

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There's a wholehearted commitment in every frame toward synthesizing the feeling of hopeless addiction. It's in the writing. It's in the chaotic cinematography. It's in the actors' eyes.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

With this movie, Aronofsky sends a couple of messages. One, of course, is about how much habitual drug use can fuel your delusions and what that combination can take away from you. The other message is that the director is now a major American filmmaker.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

It's the type of experience that you will never cry at in the theater, but will cry at long after, as the message fully sinks in.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4

An unordinary, highly stylized, gritty hyperkinetic junkie movie -- unlike anything you've seen before.

Full Review | Original Score: A+

By using familiar ploys and images only slightly askew of what television advertisements regularly show, Aronofsky manages to get across the sameness and pervasiveness of addictions of all sorts without becoming didactic.

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Never have we been taken this close to the edge and never have the characters teetering over it elicited so much sympathy. Requiem is difficult to watch but it richly rewards those who stay with it.

Full Review | Original Score: A

Regulation viewing for people who think they know better, and the most chilling fix of genius in years.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

This harrowing look at the perils of addiction -- whether it be food, television, fame, sex, or drugs and alcohol -- has to rank as one of the year's most genuinely disturbing films.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

I found it appropriate that I had trouble looking away.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Brilliantly shot, uncompromising film, with career-best performances from its stars -- the 'feel-bad' movie of the year, this demands to be seen.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5